The banjo is usually associated with country, folk, classical music, Irish traditional music and bluegrass music. Recently, the banjo has enjoyed inclusion in a wide variety of musical genres, including pop crossover music, indie rock and Celtic punk where entertainers are freely moving around and sometimes dancing.
Banjos essentially consist of a neck and body, with a plurality of tensioned strings strung across both the neck and body, supported by a bridge and secured at each end. The body consists of a banjo head attached to a resonant tone chamber. The conventional banjo head consists of a drum head material stretched over a tone ring by the means of a tension hoop.
A banjo player strums or plucks the strings, causing the drum head to vibrate. There are open back Banjos and Banjos with a resonant tone chamber. Traditional banjos are largely made from a combination of metallic and wood parts, and as a result, are quite heavy. By reducing the number of metal parts and using a lighter weight wood the instrument becomes much lighter. With the unique configuration of the top edge of the banjo body or drum the tone ring can be eliminated. The tone ring is the heaviest metal part of most Banjos and by eliminating it the Banjo becomes much more manageable.
The inventor has found that American white oak has desirable qualities in the manufacturing process. White oak is a domestic renewable resource that is light brown with paler sapwood; strong, tough, fine-grained and durable. Specific gravity, 0.7470; weight of one cubic foot, 46.35 lbs. and 20% lighter than Mahogany, Walnut or Curley Maple. White Oak is a harder wood and has longer grains, longer fibers and so it has more structural stability. As a result, white oak vibrates at a higher frequency and does not absorb as much of the sound vibrations as other wood types so the tone is louder. White oak responds to higher frequencies and so bass frequencies are very clear because of the density of the wood. Both aspects are key to great banjo tone and replace the need for a tone ring saving 28% of the weight of a banjo with a traditional tone ring design. White Oak is a hugely popular hardwood for kitchens, furniture, flooring, and interior joinery manufacture. It has a strong visible grain and is relatively free of defects. Boards are available sold Kiln Dried from Eastern United States and Canada.
The Sierra® Maple banjo (Sierra is a registered trademark of the Deering Banjo Company, Inc.) is about 11.74 lbs. and the White Oak banjo is about 8.36 lbs. which is equal to about 28% less than the weight of the Sierra Maple banjo. By eliminating the tone ring and using white oak there is an improvement in the sound quality where white oak produces a brighter tone and a very sonar bass. It has a very “growly,” clear bass response producing about two to four decibels of increased volume, while significantly reducing the manufacturing costs over the Sierra® Maple banjo.
Numerous innovations for the Banjo have been provided in the prior art that are described as follows. Even though these innovations may be suitable for the specific individual purposes to which they address, they differ from the present design as hereinafter contrasted. The following is a summary of those prior art patents most relevant to this application at hand, as well as a description outlining the difference between the features of the White Oak Banjo and the prior art.
U.S. Pat. No. 8,816,176 of Bruce J. Kunkel describes a banjo, made almost entirely of wood, eliminates most metal parts of a traditional banjo. The neck is bolted to the body, improving sustain. The body consists of a drum assembly bolted to a resonant tone chamber. The resonant tone chamber consists of a thin back, thin rim assembly, interior flange ring, thin decorative cover and tone ring. The interior flange ring provides mechanical strength to the resonant tone chamber and anchors the drum assembly. The drum assembly consists of a banjo head and a tension hoop. The banjo head snugly fits over the tone ring, and is tensioned via a plurality of bolts that secure the tension hoop in the drum assembly to the flange ring in the resonant tone chamber. A sound port cut into the rim assembly provides sound to a player. Sound holes cut into the decorative cover project sound from the resonant tone chamber toward an audience.
This patent describes a banjo, made almost entirely of wood, that eliminates most metal parts of a traditional banjo in a conventional manner but is still using a tone ring.
US Patent Application Publication No. 2006/0011041 of James Sidney Barrett describes a Banjo with a Wood Ring Alteration that alters the five string banjo's wooden ring (rim) by drilling a series of 64 holes in the ring structure at various diameters, depths and locations. This is performed on standard size wooden banjo rings.
This patent describes a Banjo with a Wood Ring Alteration that alters the five string banjo's wooden ring but still uses a conventional tone ring.
None of these previous efforts, however, provides the benefits attendant with the White Oak Banjo. The present design achieves its intended purposes, objects and advantages over the prior art devices through a new, useful and unobvious combination of method steps and component elements, with the use of a minimum number of functioning parts, at a reasonable cost to manufacture, and by employing readily available materials.
In this respect, before explaining at least one embodiment of this application in detail it is to be understood that the design is not limited in its application to the details of construction and to the arrangement of the components set forth in the following description or illustrated in the drawings. The White Oak Banjo is capable of other embodiments and of being practiced and carried out in various ways. In addition, it is to be understood that the phraseology and terminology employed herein are for the purpose of description and should not be regarded as limiting.